Hi All,
Ive got a SBS 2003 SP1 client that has odd login behavour within the past few days. One user complained this morning that his machine was hanging up indefinitely at the login. I'm able to login with other, different usernames on this machine without the same issues. I swapped out the workstation with another one with the same OS and service packs and logged in with "user1" again. The login hanged again like on the original machine.

Later in the day, I got a call from another user on the same network stating that his login was behaving erratically also. Call him "user2"

Currently, if user2 logs in from any machine, the login itself appears to hang after clicking OK on the login dialog. It will 'hang' in a greyed-out state for exactly 60 seconds before showing the "applying your personal settings" message for another 60 seconds (again, exactly) before logging on in appearing normal. Then next oddity is opening Outlook. It takes exactly 6 minutes for the status of Outlook to change from "Trying to connect..." to "Connected". As mentioned, this behavior occurs from any any machine when logging in with "user2".

Back to "user1". If I try to login to any workstation with user1, it hangs at the login (greyed-out) dialog, for 60 seconds exactly. The first time user2 logged onto this workstation, it took 16 minutes to get past "Loading your personal settings" and then 18 minutes to complete "Applying your personal settings". The second time logging into the same workstation, the same 60 seconds for the login prompt to be replaced by "applying...", but I'm up to 10 minutes and counting on waiting for this dialog to finish.

There have been no changes to any group policies in several months. FYI.

Any clues anyone has to help identify why this might be happening and how to resolve it would be a lifesaver!

Thanks,
Terry

p.s.: other users appear to behave normally when logging in from any workstation.

Most likely it's a corruption of the Active Directory User Account. Since you get the same behavior on an alternate workstation. Try the simple method of fixing this first... by using the "change user permissions wizard" in the User section of the Server Management Console. Reapply the appropriate user template to this person's user account REPLACING the current permissions.

If that doesn't work, you may need to recreate the account. To do that, use ExMerge to export out the mailbox and backup their home folder in \users\%username\. Delete the account and purge the mailbox. Then recreate the account with the same user name, ExMerge back the mailbox and copy the home folder back into place. The reason for using the same username is that SharePoint doesn't care about SIDs, only Domain\Username... so there wouldn't be any issue there.

Sorry for the delay. Long (very long) day. These users do not have roaming profiles.

Jeff, I'll try the ExMerge idea and respond. Thanks.

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colepcAuthor Commented: 2006-07-11

Jeff,
The issue as described has been resolved, but I think I have a broader issue remaining. "User1"'s issues were resolved by using the 'change user permissions wizard' in the Server Management console. The isseus with User2 required the use of Exmerge as you described. I initially found that when I recreated his account (exmerge or not) and tried to login, I gat the same behaviour. I finally narrowed it down to the user template I was using to create his account with. If I used a different template to create a new user, the problem did not occur.

So, his login is now working. The broader issue I'm now observing is with AD Users and Computers and I feel strongly it is at the root of the issues on this post. I'm going to start a new post on the AD issue.